Season 1, Episode 36: Susan Cunningham, Danielle Castillejo & Maggie Hemphill dive into arts, poetry, soul care and trauma

With more than 30 years of experience, Susan has walked alongside and listened to the stories of countless women and men and across the United States and around the world, helping them to discern and engage what God seems to be doing in their lives. Because of her unique background, she is an especially attentive listener and effective communicator. Her work is thoughtful and wise, Biblically and theologically informed, educational and inspiring. She is committed to providing practical guidance in the present and God’s hope for the future.

A Licensed Professional Counselor for over two decades, Susan continues to work with The Allender Center, facilitating lay counselor training and women’s sexual abuse recovery. She enjoys a vibrant counseling practice, and was voted "Best of Charlottesville, Virginia" for four years in a row by the public.

 

THERE ARE NO STRAIGHT LINES IN NATURE OR SORROW 

Lord we are a lamentation Living like swans in a promise Not coming true 

Flush gone all mute I weep and swear To it though I’m sure some Find meaninglessness Beyond dispute I prefer the fathomable 

Grant me faith meaning prayer Settle us down into water To receive unquiet Questions without shushing us Pitching toward the imaginable By crushing us 

Fill our plain mouths with salt Under water color light Gulps of ballet Deep sprays of mundane As a sign Father You are still fond of us 

Feathered Spirit gather us by chance intervene Lengthen your curved neck As we are sodden quivering Inelegance keening Faithless faith dance 

Sound the depths of your Brokenness rolling Sand ground thus Into meaning and well-being Like sea glass submerged Be lost with us exhausted us 

I heard you sink wisdom With understanding beneath The enormous surface of your silence 

Susan Haroutunian Cunningham

 

A FEW QUESTIONS FOR GRANDPA’S VINEYARD— FRESNO, CALIFORNIA 

To the pinhead berries clustered on grapevines Paul planted seventy years ago by my back door How dare you? 

To those curlycue tendrils reaching magnetically toward light, exhaling wrapping around climber and branch Are you listening? 

About tiny leaves making their way from those tendrils reaching larger leaves, touching with insistence Why are you emerging? 

Do you dare bring forth fruit into this burdened world full of sickness, death, poverty The undoing of everything? 

What do you know about change? How do you grow sweetness confidently in the breeze disobedient So near to one another? 

Against this cloudless cerulean spring’s new vines are still alive bright green sprouting from rough wood while 24 hour news rhythms go on 

I see freshness another mystifying cycle showing buried secrets to air, soil, sun, to the water dripping down ancient stumps 

Susan Haroutunian Cunningham 

Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.